Saturday, 25 June 2016

Ser Pounce explains #Brexit

[Ser Pounce-a-lot is a British shorthair cat who earned his Knighthood defending his dim-witted sister, Cat-a-tonia from a bunch of ruffianly dogs. A feline of rare wit and sharp insight, he often condescends to share his wisdom with his human slave, Percy the Slacker (the man behind this blog). In an ongoing series, Ser Pounce's wisdom shall be presented in the form of conversations between him and his scribe, the aforementioned Percy. Below, is one such...]

Cats, Dogs and Brexit

“You’re looking rather peaky, Ser
Pounce. All is not well? Did I forget to feed you? Did I brush your fur the
wrong way? Did the big tomcat from the street bully you?”

“No, no, nothing of the sort. Just
feeling sorry for my old pal Larry the Cat.”

“Larry the what?”

“Cat. C-A-T.”

“Ah ok, got that. What happened to
Larry the Cat? Run over by a car? Skewered by a stray Masai Mara?”

“No, he lost his job as Chief
Mouser to the Cabinet.”

Larry, just before David came out to address the press

In happier times

“I…wait, now I remember! Wasn’t he
in the news for not actually catching any mice?”

“Yes, which was ridiculous because
catching mice was never his job, as Chief Bureau-cat he is actually the top
advisor to the Government and reports directly to the Queen.”

“Fascinating. Is he the only one?”

“There’s a lot of them. Freya is the
Cat-cellar of the Exchequer. Palmerston is Cat-in-charge at the Foreign office.”

“I assume that’s George Osborne’s
cat, and she’s also out of a job?”

Palmerston of the Foreign Office

Freya from No. 11 Downing Street, George Osborne's cat.

“It’s all a huge tragedy.”

“I take it you refer to #Brexit.
Yes, it’s unfortunate. The economic implications alone..”

“Many good cats will lose their jobs.
Larry and Freya are only the cusp of a full-fledged cat crisis. Ollie the
Brockley cat might be next, if Sainsbury’s shuts down.”

Is Ollie next?

“You’ve lost me.”

“Sorry, I forget sometimes that I
need to speak at your level. British cats and humans have lost access to the
rest of the EU in the job market, you see. It will be phased, I suppose, but it
will happen nonetheless.”

“I suppose there will be trade
barriers too?”

“It depends, I don’t know how
Germany and the other EU countries will treat UK now. I suppose they would want
to balance the need to continue to do business with them with the fact that
they need to deter poisonous politicians in other countries. Like when I catch
a mouse and play with him for hours before eating him because I can’t make up
my mind whether to eat him myself or leave him on your living room floor as a
gift to you.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me. But why
would the people of the UK vote for something against their own self-interest
then?”

“Because humans are stupid?”

“Easy for you to say, you are a
cat.”

“Half a billion Indians voted a
bunch of lackwits to power in India two years ago.”

“To be fair, it was 31% of the
turnout, about 171 million out of a turnout of 500…”

“Don’t make excuses for your own
species, the fact is when you allow people to choose for themselves, they often
make a choice based on fear of the other, or believing in an impossible dream.
Now us cats, we do everything with our eyes wide open.”

“You cats don’t actually do
anything but sleep. But I see what you mean. It’s like Nigel Farage and Michael
Gove and that asshat Boris Johnson, who promised that they would have 350
million pounds to pump into the Healthcare System by voting to #Brexit and
after winning the vote, they pretended they had never actually said that?”

“Or like how the chaps you voted
for said there would be fifteen lakh rupees in every Indian’s account, and the
Rupee would grow stronger against the dollar, and taxes would reduce, and the
price of gas would come down, and…”

“Uh right, so you’re saying the
British people fell for the #AchheDin fallacy.”

“That and flagrant bigotry.”

“The #Brexit people also went full
steam ahead with an anti-immigrant rhetoric, didn’t they? It’s amazing that they
won in cities like Birmingham and Bradford, which have such large Asian Muslim
populations.”

“Not a surprise at all, human, it’s
often easiest to polarise people in the areas where there is a significant
population of the ‘other’. Fear is a more powerful motivation than hope. A
sleeping cat sees a passing fisherwoman. Maybe she will throw a fish the cat’s
way. Maybe she won’t. That’s hope, and most cats will keep sleeping. But see a
bigger cat or a dog on the horizon…”

“And the cat will run for the
hills, I see. Sad, though.”

“And yet, it works every time,
doesn’t it?”

“Don’t even start, Ser Pounce.
Don’t even start.”

“Well, don’t you get depressed. I
mean yes, I know your stock in Tata companies would have nosedived…”

“They sort of depended on being
able to access the European Markets through London.”

“They and many others. But the
British people are not obligated to think about Indian companies and their access
to the ECM, any more than Fish-market cats are obliged to worry about
meat-market cats.”

“In this case, the fish-market cats
have cut themselves off from the people who actually buy fish, haven’t they?”

Protecting her turf

“And the people who actually…well,
fish.”

“Well, it’s all very sad.”

“That is true, human. Had this been
a result of economic considerations it may not have been so bad as the fact
that the underlying factors consisted to a large extent of hate.”

“You’re one to talk. You won’t let
me keep a dog.”

“I love dogs. Some of the best
friends are dogs.”

“Listen to yourself.”

“All I’m saying is, dogs should
stay on their own side of the fence, that’s all I’m saying. The dogs, they come
and take the job of honest, hard-working cats.”

“Your ‘job’ consists of sleeping
for eighteen hours a day and making supercilious comments to me. A dog would
actually fetch and carry and keep away burglars.”

“Cats would do that too, but these
dogs, they come in waves over the fence, and…”

“You could always hold a vote on
whether you want to leave my home, you know.”

“Aw, come on, human, where would I
get a more devoted slave than you? Now go, mourn over your ravaged investment
portfolio. I have to catch up on my sleep.”

The Brits did get Ca'maroon'ed, didn't they? I have read articles how Indians would benefit out of the stiff upper lips' rather temporary loss of sanity, so Ser Pounce might actually end up doing better than the Polish cats?!

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About Me

Percy Slacker was bitten by Schrodinger’s Cat as a child, and has since then combined a deep fear of cats with an
abiding conviction that he both exists and does not exist at the same
time. This existential doubt has led him
to grow up to be a writer while not actually being a writer.

He lives in Mumbai with his family, his book collection and a firm
conviction that modern civilization is in an interminable decline.